iD Games Now On Steam

Frankly every other online content distribution system should just give up on classic first-person shooters now because Steam has got just about every one worth having. In a joint announcement at QuakeCon, iD Software and Valve are releasing a huge back-catalogue of games such as Quake, Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Doom on to the Steam network. Various packs are available including the entire iD back catalogue for around £35.

What’s great is that if you purchase via Steam, it’s guaranteed the game will work under XP and Vista, whereas if you bought them in CD in shop, that wouldn’t be the case. Wouldn’t it be great if they could do the same deal with the early Star Wars games such as Tie Fighter?

With titles such as Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and the newly-announced Rage soon coming from iD it will be interesting to see whether any of these games will be available via Steam as well.

The main interest of this announcement, to me at least, is the ever growing support for the online distribution format from several big developers. With iD, Valve and EA all offering online purchase for their games, one can’t help but wonder how long the traditional CD/DVD distribution method can survive.